Been a while. Whew. Okay, for the uninitiated, I'm working on some movie stuff. "Day X", my first finished full-length pic, is slowly spreading across the globe, and I'm psyched. Thailand, Japan, Germany, and the U.S., on dvd, all within the next few months. It's also going to AFM (the American Film Market) in November, where we expect to land deals for the Netherlands, Australia, and some more Asian and European territories. The really cool thing is that now that the deals are pretty much closed, I can get out of fucking used-car-salesman mode and get back to what I'm actually happy doing: writing and directing.
The next one is called "Vile", and it's a slasher pic. And when I say that, know that I've only seen two slasher pics in my entire life that I can claim to like, the original "Halloween" and "Black Sunday". The rest (and believe me, I watched tons of them in the '80's) pretty much suck so hard you wouldn't want to get too close to 'em lest you get your skin ripped off. So with "Vile" our intent is to make a slasher movie that undoes the damage done by all those cheap knock-off's with all those numbers and roman numerals behind them. That means well-written and -acted characters, good pace and mood and tone, and a genuine sense of threat. One of the things about Carpenter's "Halloween" is that even though it spawned a huge amount of imitators, none of them ever really pegged what made it so fucking frightening in the first place. Say what you will, but that movie was one of the first ones to bring a horrific event into middle America's front yard. It was the first movie that really made the babysitter look like an endangered species. And for creep factor, there's a scene where a little kid is stalked by the unseen killer, Michael Myers, all through the pov of Myers' car, that seems like it lasts for an hour. Not because it's badly done, but because it makes you so fucking uncomfortable.
So "Vile" is an attempt to prove that we've learned from what Carpenter started. I'll let you know as things progress. If this works, you'll be able to say "I knew about that bald Austin director guy when..."
In completely unrelated news, can you believe that Venezuelan guy, Chavez? Calling Bush "the devil". Now, here in Austin (the blue city in an otherwise red state; for the record, I voted blue), we take seriously the whole Bush debacle. After all, he was ours before he was the whole country's. I even met him in a book fair. He didn't make much of an impression; wouldn't make eye contact, and that pisses me off. Anyways, I digress. We still feel guilty here in Austin that we didn't stop him when he was still small, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone under the age of 40 who thinks the guy is anything more than a dangerous chimp. But fuck, Hugo. You just did him the hugest favor. What with you and that Iranian guy, you know, the one who finally spoke publicly about how his mission in life is to cause chaos and usher in the Mahdi (and no, I'm not making any of this up)... At least Bush is just stupid, dangerously callous, and old-money greedy. But you guys are just fucking crazy. I dunno, maybe I'm just exhausted, living in a world that's frequently more and more about choosing between the lesser of two doomsdays. Holy fuck, guys. Don't any of you ever get laid?
The next one is called "Vile", and it's a slasher pic. And when I say that, know that I've only seen two slasher pics in my entire life that I can claim to like, the original "Halloween" and "Black Sunday". The rest (and believe me, I watched tons of them in the '80's) pretty much suck so hard you wouldn't want to get too close to 'em lest you get your skin ripped off. So with "Vile" our intent is to make a slasher movie that undoes the damage done by all those cheap knock-off's with all those numbers and roman numerals behind them. That means well-written and -acted characters, good pace and mood and tone, and a genuine sense of threat. One of the things about Carpenter's "Halloween" is that even though it spawned a huge amount of imitators, none of them ever really pegged what made it so fucking frightening in the first place. Say what you will, but that movie was one of the first ones to bring a horrific event into middle America's front yard. It was the first movie that really made the babysitter look like an endangered species. And for creep factor, there's a scene where a little kid is stalked by the unseen killer, Michael Myers, all through the pov of Myers' car, that seems like it lasts for an hour. Not because it's badly done, but because it makes you so fucking uncomfortable.
So "Vile" is an attempt to prove that we've learned from what Carpenter started. I'll let you know as things progress. If this works, you'll be able to say "I knew about that bald Austin director guy when..."
In completely unrelated news, can you believe that Venezuelan guy, Chavez? Calling Bush "the devil". Now, here in Austin (the blue city in an otherwise red state; for the record, I voted blue), we take seriously the whole Bush debacle. After all, he was ours before he was the whole country's. I even met him in a book fair. He didn't make much of an impression; wouldn't make eye contact, and that pisses me off. Anyways, I digress. We still feel guilty here in Austin that we didn't stop him when he was still small, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone under the age of 40 who thinks the guy is anything more than a dangerous chimp. But fuck, Hugo. You just did him the hugest favor. What with you and that Iranian guy, you know, the one who finally spoke publicly about how his mission in life is to cause chaos and usher in the Mahdi (and no, I'm not making any of this up)... At least Bush is just stupid, dangerously callous, and old-money greedy. But you guys are just fucking crazy. I dunno, maybe I'm just exhausted, living in a world that's frequently more and more about choosing between the lesser of two doomsdays. Holy fuck, guys. Don't any of you ever get laid?